Model driven generation and testing of object-relational mappings

Object-oriented software development as well as relational data storage are leading standards in their respective areas. The persistent storage of objects in relational tables is therefore a topic of major interest. To do so efficiently, a plethora of problems has to be overcome due to the impedance mismatch between the object-oriented and relational paradigms. Nowadays, dedicated objectrelational middlewares are frequently used to decouple relational databases from object-oriented applications. Even if this approach shields the developer from the majority of run-time related aspects, the manual mapping of incrementally evolving complex object models to relational tables still remains as an inherently difficult and error-prone task. Therefore, this article focuses on automation support for the model driven generation and testing of object-relational mappings. 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.